What Dem Books Look Like???

“$15,000 dollars to come and speak at one of their local chapters?!?!?!” Ain’t no way!!!! This was my response in finding out how much Opal Tometi would charge us, BLM - Williamsburg, an unofficial local chapter, this insane amount to come and speak at our annual BLM conference. This was back in 2017 while I was still a lead organizer in BLM. Evidently, that was yesterday’s price because now she starts at $25,0000.

Yes, we were an unofficial chapter, but unofficial BLM chapters were the norm. The price had nothing to do with our chapter status. It had nothing to do with liberating our people. Tometi’s speaker fee in 2017 shows what BLM has been about this whole time, the money. 

My homie and Director of Black Organizing for the IBFA, Tory Russell, already started off this conversation by calling for us to dismantle and #defundBLM. In this joint, I take a closer look at BLM and money. How much money has BLM received? Where did all that money go? Let’s jump in.

We had to get these articles off after the segment of Torraine Walker questioning Melina Abdulla about the money on the Roland Martin show. She danced around the question and lied. She stated: “At the time, I didn’t know about dollars coming in.”

As this picture of them toasting champagne on the one year anniversary of George Floyd’s death reveals, she did know about the money coming in. This is why we need to expose BLM and look into how they are handling the money for the movement. BLM is profiting off of Black pain and is a danger to the very Black lives that they claim mattered. Instead of being a true journalist like Torraine, Roland Martin did a horrible job. While we can clearly see that Melina was lying and not directly answering the question, Roland covered for her by jumping in when Torraine asked follow up questions. We called him out on his journalism and how he handled the interview. As you can see, he stood ten toes down on his poor journalism and misinformation. Here is the full episode right here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb_jdSAQ7CY&t=1s. While he claimed to only “cover the NEWS” and provide “FACTS in this dispute. I’ve covered it from day one,” let me show you what really happened with BLM and the money they received.

This info is coming from research, people who sat at the table with Alicia, Opal, and Patrisse and my prior work as a lead organizer of the unofficial BLM Williamsburg chapter. First I want to shout out Julia Davis aka Ayaba Sibongile aka “Mama Julia” for what she uncovered. Mama Julia is one of the founding members of the IBFA. She discovered that BLM had actually started the Global Network Foundation in 2013, was fiscally sponsored by Thousand Currents and Tides and received funding from numerous foundations. One of her sources was Influence Watch. 

Just like Tory showed that BLM was capping with that  “leaderless movement” line, they also were capping with the “we are not an organization” line. Check out this article that Patrisse pinned “We didn’t start a movement. We started a network” in 2016. She explains how they created the “BLM network infrastructure.” Nowhere in this article did they mention the official Global Network Foundation that they started 3 years ago. 

This is what we do know, here are all the tax documents that are publicly available: 2019, 2020, 2021. There are also several articles, including this one from AP, that a 60 page filing was submitted to the IRS in May. 

Influence Watch indicated that BLM was first fiscally sponsored by Thousand Currents. They were sponsored by Thousand Currents from 2016 to 2020. In 2020, the Tides Foundation took over. Due to their fiscal sponsorship, BLM really didn’t have to be transparent surrounding the money. As we can see from the publicly available tax information, there is nothing available until the 2020 990. This is a huge problem because we all know they received money before then.  Influence Watch states: “Organizations that donated to the BLM Global Network Foundation through its former fiscal sponsor Thousand Currents between 2015 and 2019 include the NoVo Foundation ($1,525,000), the W.K. Kellogg Foundation ($900,000) and Borealis Philanthropy ($343,000).” Now it should be clear that we have no clearly identifiable record of funding from 2013 to 2020. If we consider all the nationally publicized police killings and funding drives during this time frame, that is a lot of money. 

Now that we can see the funding for the past 3 years, we still don’t know if they are properly accounting for the money. There have been a wide variety of funders. Corporations, celebrities, foundations, and regular people, all have donated to BLM. Going through this long list of funders, from Microsoft, to the Ford Foundation, to Jordan Peele to “John Doe,” how can we properly account for all of this money without seeing the books? If John Doe gave money at a rally, sent money to a Cashapp or even sent a check, are we trusting an organization that has lied on national television, kept their financial records secret for 7 years and purchased million dollar mansions to be honest about all of the donations received? Another question that is not clear is how did BLM accept the money and how did donors give? For example, the Ford Foundation partnered with Borealis Philanthropy to create the Black-Led Movement Fund. They would then give money to the Movement for Black Lives. That means money could come in anywhere, from Venmo to PayPal to the philanthropic set up fund. Also, the way this money was moved around between the Global Network Foundation and Movement for Black Lives affirms what Tory talked about in the previous article.

All of these questions lead us to the most important question of all: How much money has BLM received? While there are several headlines saying $90 million in one year, we shouldn’t just go with the headline. Do research for yourself. Fyi, there has been some confusion between Black Lives Matter Foundation, led by Ray Barnes and Black Lives Matter Global Network. Check this article out while you are doing your research. 

There is no way to be certain of the exact amount of money they obtained unless BLM comes out and shows us. Show us the books BLM and stop lying on Black dead bodies.

Dismantle and #Defund #BlackLivesMatter

It comes a time in every leader’s life where they have to make tough decisions. These tough decisions should be made not on personality or style but on integrity and principle. So today, I have to write an article calling for the dismantling and defunding of Black Lives Matter.

At this point, I thought it was clear how Black Lives Matter came to this level of disfunction and who all were responsible for this dumpster fire. But now I see that it’s not clear so let me break it down further for my people. I met BLM before I actually knew I met them. Just like now, they always show up with multiple names. Let’s take BLM co-founder Alicia Garza for example, she came to Ferguson about two weeks late, and not as a BLM members but as a representative of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. This is crucial for us all to understand because they use always use this tactic to express their desire to just do “black movement work” but can’t because their job for won’t let them. This is to disarm your defensiveness to them not being involved in the struggle already or so you think.  You see back then I knew nothing about the non profit Industrial complex. Didn’t know they were paid full time to organize around these issues. And I sure in the hell didn’t know that they were sent into cities all over by their funders to derail and misdirect the movements since the  Jena 6 days. But back then I was just a Ferguson Front-liner, known for organizing the first protest at the Ferguson PD on the night of August 9th, 2014. That led me to being the spokesperson and one a the few leaders who had the love of the masses, respect from the elders and a platform to deliver the message to our people work wide. That got me invited to a movement meeting where I saw most of the characters for the first time. It was leaders from protest movement from all over the country like the Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant protest to name a few. Every month we would meet in another city to create direction and give leadership to the movement. So the, “we are a leaderless movement” line was cap from the jump. It was meant for them to avoid accountability if something went wrong and to take all the credit if anything ever went right. I objected but lost a vote 11-1 at one of those movement meetings. Not even the people who agreed with me in those debates voted with me for the time came. I guess I should’ve known what time it was from there but I was concentrating on the liberation of my people so I thought I could organize beyond this mis step.

You see, BLM uses white liberal white supremacist tactics to squash opposition. They only use violence when you gain too much traction but their preferred methods are arbitrary processes meant to look like fairness while the fix is already in. Take what they did to their own real chapters in 2020. In November of 2020, 10 + chapters wanted to vote on the direction of their movement and was kicked out for it. They later gave an updated statement of who was responsible at the time of keeping them unresourced, unorganized and who was stopping them from a democratic process. Does this sound like a leaderless movement to you? Right!

And I know what you’re going to say. But those aren’t the same people. Leadership has changed. Wrong! This is a high level game of three card monty that you’re watching. Blink and you gone pick the wrong card. Just for clarity, Black Lives Matter is BLM. BLM is the Movement for Black Lives. The Movement for Black Lives is the Black Lives Matter Global Network. The Black Lives Matter Global Network is the Black Lives Matter Global Network  Foundation. The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is Black Lives Matter Grassroots. The same names who appear here on their new website are the same names that appear here on the old website from when BLM 10 called them out almost 3 years ago.

Sorry to be so meticulous but I had to make it plan for my people. Because you’re going to see people lie in your face and say that they weren’t apart of it. That they had nothing to do with that time in BLM. That they weren’t there. That they are just now learning how to put a non profit or organization structure together for the first time in their lives. And that they never had money before 2020 but again that’s cap. Here are some of the same names that appear on Black Lives Matter latest 990 show up on a this thing called the Black Led Movement Fund and they’ve given out over 20 million since 2016.

So when you hear Dr. Melina Abdullah repeating the lies we’ve all heard in the media since 2020 on BlackStar Network. As an original to this, I gotta check it. I mean Roland Martin not only allowed her to say it on his show but jumped in to defend such baseless claims. You can see for yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnwFISTK2sk . Just go to 41:40 1:26:33) and watch the misdirection for yourself.

And when credited Black journalist simply asked her honest and fair questions, she dodged them and Roland jumped in like a paid Black Lives Matter Public Relations Department to answer for her. Killing his credibility with the grassroots. Then Dr. Melina Abdullah, University of California professor, went on Instagram Live to threaten Torraine Walker like a mob boss. I guess that’s what you get when you give someone who preys on activist, the families of victims of police brutality and desperate gang members caught up in the corrupt Los Angeles court system, millions of dollars with cronies as her “accountability”.  This type of hit she put out makes me them rethink the theory that BLM, with the help of their white liberal funders executed a hit on F.B.I. spied upon and now assassinated Ferguson Freedom Fighter Darren Seals, for his sharp criticism of the BLM organization and movement.

You see when you’ve been though what I’ve been through not telling the truth is never an option. Not telling our people over and over again until they get it isn’t one either. Because at this point anybody with the hashtag in their bio, a part of the organization still or funding them, is not funding a movement for Black liberation at all. Instead, they aregiving their time, energy and money to small group of Black people to sit pool side, drink champagne and eat caviar in a 6 million dollar mansion while black people’s lives get worse by the minute. We see that Black Lives Matter didn’t matter to them at all unless it was their own or the few who was in on the Ponzi scheme.

In Black Truth,

Tory Russell

This is an excerpt from Tory Russell’s upcoming debut book “Ferguson Taught Me”. Slated for release in 2024.

King Darren Seals was right...

This goes without saying at this point but BLM ain’t shit. Since we found out they were gatekeeping the movement bag in 2021, it seems like every month we find another house that they purchased with the peoples’ money. The latest shindig was found in Canada, in the name of disgraced BLM co-founder’s wife Janaya Khan, for the tune of 6.3 million dollars. This makes 5 houses in counting. It’s no secret that the masses are fed up with their movement, leadership style and organization, which looks more like CashApp hustle than a movement fund. 

The referendum on Black Lives Matter started way back in 2015 with Ferguson activist actually calling out Patrice Cullors and other leaders from the Movement for Black Lives at the first Convening for Black Lives in Cleveland, OH. The following year, it was an BLM chapter in Indianapolis, IN, who actually wrote a manifesto as a parting shot as they severed ties with the organization for what they called an commodification of the movement. For years, we would hear chirps about the scammers of the movement. From Deray McKesson to Sir Major, there was always a name or  an organization who would come up as the people who were profiting off of the pain of families and protestors who were doing the real work while the people with the best twitter fingers were milking us dry. The funny thing about all the movement hustlers was that it was one person who always saw them and their hustle coming before it ever hit. The person was King Darren Seals. A budding rap mogul, former drug dealer turned Ferguson frontline activist, he saw the tricks coming from a mile away every time. It didn’t matter if it was a non profit or a politician, he could never be pimped. And more importantly, he would never let the people be pimped if he could do anything about it. 

You see, this man was the one who let me know about the grifting that Deray McKesson and his crew were doing to us in Ferguson. No one on the ground organizing even knew who Deray was but Darren did. By the time we found out that they even existed, McKesson, better known as the the fraud in a blue vest, had been exposed, confronted and banned him from ever setting foot here in Ferguson again by Seals. And in true D Seals fashion I might add. This no fly zone continues on til this day due to his powerful and convincing words and actions. It seems somewhat prophetic that these people and their entities are now being called out and dismantled in such a public and demonstrative way for their unapologetically exploitation of the resistance. This is some what of a redemption story for slain Ferguson activist King Darren Seals. Why? Because he predicted all of this to the tee. 

You see back in our Ferguson days, Darren was the person I could talk to about what was going on at the national table. My role as one of the leader organizers in Ferguson coupled with my ability to speak to the media from a Pro-Black perspective, landed me a spot to help build the movement. But the movement that we see today is vastly different from the one we attempted to create back in Ferguson in 2014. And Seals role in all that was that he had an ear to the streets as well as a vision for Black Freedom. We would meet all the time at the Ferguson Burger Bar, chowing down on some of fire double melts and fries, talking about Black revolutionary ideas and strategies. For the most part, our visions aligned. We agreed that voting did very little for our people because we were not unified enough for a collective action like that quite yet. We knew that though marching was never the end all be all, we saw that the Ferguson way of civil disobedience gave us an opportunity to disrupt business as usual, address the masses without mainstream media and instilled the sense of courage against the system. That courage was more important than a website or a hashtag because we knew that the revolution would not be televised.

My brother in struggle never pulled any punches when it came to those that opposed these ideas either. Letting any and every one have it if he thought they were getting out of line of what we secretly called the “Ferguson Plan.” Our plan was one part, the spook who sat by the door, one part BMF, and one part Black Panther Party. Our plan was to bring our Black brothers and sisters from the streets to corporate America to the jails together under one umbrella for the liberation of our people. Essentially, building the much needed unity that a grassroots movement would need, in order to unify beyond class or individual identities. He understood better than the so called inter-sectionalist, that we as a people, despite our differences had to become so committed to the struggle that we would look beyond each other’s petty disagreements and get to the revolutionary work that is needed to free our people. Our shared vision would link and utilize one another’s skill sets to best serve and empower our people towards freedom. Imagine the movement infrastructure we could’ve built with this level of Black unity. I mean Tik Tok would be a Black app that empowers black content creators and influencers for the benefit our community. And that’s just one example.

If you knew him, you would know he was all about institution building. King Seals knew that if we controlled the institutions in our communities then we could restore and influence over our people’s cultural practices that have been offset by the centuries of whitewashing our people have went through. Darren, like many others, had one main issue. Money. 

Considering that BLM racked up over 90 million dollars in 2020 alone, this movement doesn’t have that problem. And guess what? Seals predicted that too. He said that because it was no Black people from the streets was leading Black Lives Matter, that the white funders would be comfortable with white minded Negros begging for money and give to to them. He knew that BLM’s lack of connectivity to the everyday working and non working Black person would be a blind spot so without someone like us in the room they would forget about us. So I stayed in the room as long as I could until I couldn’t take the lies, deception and anti-blackness in the space where Blackness should’ve been centered at all times. You got remember that your favorite misinformed blogger or YouTuber might’ve said that millions was coming into to Ferguson but it wasn’t getting into the hands of people like us. By default and because other people weren’t good at it, I became the fundraiser for the authentic side of Ferguson. I could go to talk Black rappers and techies to get a little money here and there but never in the millions though. The biggest we got was $250,000 from Jay-Z but as soon as it hit, Black Lives Matter and the local movement scammers got jealous and attacked. And they made it clear that we weren’t supposed to get that type of funding to do the real work. That made us targets to the system and the hypocrites of the movement. BLM was so envious of the grant that they put out a press release letting everyone know that though the grant was named after the movement/organization but the money had nothing to do with them. When D Seals saw that, he brought it to me like “Do you see your people?” After reading it, I went to them and was like “Why y’all doing this?’ And they were like “For clarity.” From then on, I knew what time it was and planned my departure.

When I brought their response back to Seals, it was like he already knew their answer. For having the ability to speak for ourselves on a real movement vision, we were blackballed by the movement and social media. Darren would post videos blasting people all the time but never getting thousands of views. Later we learned of the term of shadow-banning,  where a tech company can limit who all can see our post to tweets as a form of control. Once we knew that they would keep us from the money and suppress of voice, we decided to go back to what we knew best, which was building with the Black people like us in the community. We wanted the people who knew that this system could not be reformed but only replaced by a new movement and system built in Black love, power and unity. We organized everywhere, he stayed home and held local meetings which consistently had 100s of attendees while I went across the country and sometimes outside of it to gather as many like minded Black people I could find to implement the Ferguson Plan. 

One day at my house, we talked about the day that all this treachery would come to light and that the hypnotism that Black Lives Matter once held on our people would fade away. And that we would have to be prepared to recapture the mind, body and hearts of our people from the despair and heartbreak put on them by these movement scammers. This process had to restore them to a level where they then could also restore others so we can have millions of Black people building the last movement our people will ever need. And boy was he right.

Darren always had the voice that could move the people towards liberation. I know because it was his voice was the one that moved me further than I could ever move myself. Those early days in Ferguson showed me what Seals could do with a loud enough megaphone or platform to start a revolution. 

His videos calling out Black feminist for loving Black boys and men when we were dead for a check but not loving us while we're still alive can be found on the internet. He called out Deray way before the 40 million that Campaign Zero pilfered from the movement came up short. He exposed Black Lives Matter years before their members and the media did. Too bad he never got to see those chicken come home to roost. 

King Darren Seals body was found burned to death in his own jeep after being shot and driven miles to a dark spot just a few miles from Ferguson. He leaves behind no kids but many family members and an entire community of people who love and miss him.

King Darren’s uncanny ability to not only identify the house negro and their intentions but as well as expose them for the world to see was a god given gift that he used time and time again for the people. He predicted the hustlenomics that we are seeing from Black Lives Matter and others like them today like the hood Nostradamus he was. Your wisdom, courage and discernment is forever missed and so are you. Can’t wait to see you again. I still got some work down here to finish so I’ll catch with you in a little minute my dear movement brother.

Peace 

Black Women Voices from the Black Freedom Movement in the 1960s

Due to popular White narratives about the Black Freedom Movement, we think about the movement from the 1950s to the 1970s as the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement. The main problem with this framing is that White media, the very people who we are fighting against, are the ones who decided it should be this way. Many Black people who were active during this time took issue with this framing. Malcolm X talked about the dangers of this framing on multiple occasions with an example being one of his most famous speeches, the Ballot or the Bullet. Another freedom fighter who was active during this time, Vincent Harding, speech writer and friend of Martin Luther King, said that calling it the Civil Rights Movement didn’t fully capture the “tremendous expansion of the human spirit” that was active in the movement. Peep the second part of this interview and check out his book There Is A River: The Black Struggle for Freedom. He convincingly argues that we are in a Black freedom struggle that didn’t start in the South in 1954, rather a “river” that started in Africa and flowed throughout the diasporas fighting for our freedom. The way he explains it is so fire that I need to quote it here:

At first, as the river metaphor took life within me, I was unduly concerned about its apparent inexactness and ambiguity. Now, with the passing of time and the deepening of our vision, it is possible to recognize that we are indeed the river, and at the same time the river is more than us—generations more, millions more. Through such an opening we may sense that the river of black struggle is people, but it is also the hope, the movement, the transformative power that humans create and that create them, us, and makes them, us, new persons. So we black people are the river; the river is us. The river is in us, created by us and this entire nation. And at its best the river of our struggle has moved consistently toward the ocean of humankind's most courageous hopes for freedom and integrity, forever seeking what black people in South Carolina said they sought in 1865: “the right to develop our whole being." (Harding, There Is a River, xix)

The White narrative of the Black Freedom movement ain’t talking like that. It focuses solely on the Black male leaders such as King, X, Carmichael and so on. This White narrative primarily played a role in silencing Black women and LGBTQIA people. Let's talk about what really happened and refocus on the Black Freedom Movement. In this way, we can account for all the Black people that make up the river, especially Black women. Black feminists have made claims, based on the White framing of the movement, that Black women primarily experienced sexism from Black men in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. While it is clear that they are looking at the movement incorrectly, how sexist and patriarchal were Black men in the movement? 

This collection of voices of Black women does not definitively answer the question. Based on White Supremacy and the colonized society that we live in, it would be foolish to say that no Black men in the movement weren’t sexist or didn’t adopt the ways of the colonizer and mistreated Black women. But, what we will soon see from the voices of Black women, that was not always the case. Contrary to popular narratives, their stories might surprise you.

Dorothy Height : My Experience In The Civil Rights Movement

Interviewer: “How difficult was it for  you, occasionally, to be the only woman in that group.”

Heights: “I have to honestly say, I felt that we were a group of peers. I felt at home in the group. … I never had to fight in that group.”

Kathleen Neal Cleaver Women, Power, and Revolution (1998)

“In fact, according to a survey Bobby Seale did in 1969, two-thirds of the members of the Black Panther Party were women. I am sure you are wondering, why isn't this the image that you have of the Black Panther Party? Well, ask yourself, where did the image of the Black Panthers that you have in your head come from? … Could it be that the images and stories of the Black Panthers that you've seen and heard were geared to something other than conveying what was actually going on?”

Elaine Brown slams Bourgeois Feminists

"People think the Black people, that we had some kind of animalistic thug boys and that all the women were bitches in the kitchen. No. It was not like that.

But it caused that stereotype. So I'm checking it now."

Here is David Ponton’s explanation of Panther Sisters on Women’s Liberation

Yet, this interview of Panther women, from 1969, doesn't argue the Panthers were defined by sexism, that its gender politics were static, or that men were sexists and women were not. What we see is a lot of young people, in their early 20s, trying to figure shit out. pic.twitter.com/KFaXCmNbLU

— ew david | fold in the cheese (@thurgoodhamer) January 4, 2022

Shout out to Omowale Afrika for this clip.

Women of the Black Panther Party speak on how the Women's Liberation Movement sought to divide Black women from Black men. pic.twitter.com/SptQGKQv2P

— Nation State of Mind (@OmowaleAfrika) March 24, 2018

Excerpt from Tommy Curry’s Man-Not

Think of Stokely Carmichael’s statement, “The only position for women in the SNCC is prone,” for instance.33 … Mary King, a member of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the author of Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, offers a vastly different account of this oft-cited statement. …

King fondly accounts that Carmichael made fun of everything that crossed his agile mind, and this position paper was no different. When he came to the not-so-anonymous women’s paper in the meeting, King recounts, “Looking straight at me, he grinned broadly and shouted, ‘What is the position of women in SNCC?’ Answering himself, he responded, ‘The position of women in SNCC is prone!’”37 According to King, the now infamous statement by Carmichael was a joke. She remembers that “Stokely threw back his head and roared outrageously with laughter. We all collapsed with hilarity. . . . It drew us all closer together, because, even in that moment, he was poking fun at his own attitudes.”38 … King says, “Casey and I felt, and continue to feel, that Stokely was one of the most responsive men at the time that our anonymous paper appeared in 1964.”39 Several years later, Hayden confirmed King’s recollection of events in SNCC. Even in 2010, Hayden remembered the SNCC as a “womanist, nurturing, and familial” organization. In fact, Hayden went as far as to state, “Women’s  culture  and [B]lack  culture  merg[ed]  for  me  in  the  southern  freedom movement,  especially  in SNCC,  free  of  constraints  and  the  values  of  white patriarchy.”40 

Tommy Curry,  The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2017) pg. 13

Written by OUR DIRECTOR OF BLACK REVOLUTIONARY EDUCATION - Dr. Travis “HOOD SCHOLAR” HARRIS
He wants to especially acknowledge ibfa’s core team “Mama” julia davis aka ayaba sibongile and tory russell for their contributions to this article. hood scholar also wants to show appreciation to dr. tommy curry for bringing up the voices of black women that are usually silenced.

Black Organizers respond to the targeted removal of Haitians at the border while pointing out the hypocrisy with Afghan immigrants

Ferguson, Mo — This week at the Del Rio, Texas border, only the Haitians attempting to apply for refugee status were captured by border patrol on horseback and then put on planes back to Haiti. These acts of terror against Black lives got us asking what's the difference between the 19th century and the 21st century. These images look just like slave catchers illegally rounding up free Black people under the Slave Fugitive Act of the 1850s. At the very same time Haitians are being terrorized, the US is setting aside billions of dollars and making accomodations for Afghanistan refugees.

The US and France should be held responsible for Haitians becoming refugees in the first place. In 1825, France started to tax Haiti for their independence that ended up totaling $21 billion in today’s dollars. While paying taxes to France, Woodrow Wilson and the US invaded Haiti in 1915 and colonized this country until 1934. This long history of White terror along with several earthquakes, the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and other events are what led to Haitain refugees at the Del Rio, Texas border. On US soil, Biden carried out Trump’s immigration policy, Title 42, and deported Haitians.

But this is a part of a broader conversation that needs to be had at the International level around anti-blackness in foreign policy, predatory lending and debtors, and foreign mercenaries dressed up in missionary and aid specialist clothing. The only remedy we see to ensure that no Black immigrants show up at the borders of any Western country again is to mandate that countries like the US, France, Germany, Belgium and many others pay the descendants of enslaved Africans all around the world reparations.

It is unacceptable for the US, France and these other countries to go around destabilizing Black nations and not expect for these citizens to one day end up at your doorsteps.

To the many Haitian immigrants who have and will be returning home soon, we pray to the ancestors that you go back home and lead a powerful revolution that returns power back to the people of Haiti. We pray that you govern with the feeling of being turned away at the border on your mind everyday when dealing with the US and other racist nations. And I hope that you and every other Black immigrant here and abroad know what Black people have known in this country since its inception, that the white man’s American dream is a Black man’s nightmare. Haitian family, you are not alone, your African brothers and sisters around the world stand in solidarity with you.

And to the Biden administration and the Democratic Party, good luck in the 2022 midterm elections without us because we won’t forget.

Signed,

The Black organizers who will remember this in 2022